I was reading the 7 Principles of Fat Burning by Eric Berg, DC when I came across his statement that "Fat is not the problem, it is a symptom". The little light bulb in my head turned on. I realized that I had once again bought into another of our cultural concepts, believing that fat is a problem that we need to get rid of, usually by dieting. As Eric points out, it really is a symptom, a clue as to what's off in our body. At that point it fits into our Asian medicine view of the world - that there are root causes for all conditions and we address the imbalances we discover by addressing the root causes, not by masking the symptoms. This allows us to not only reduce fat, but also to control weight.